David Myatt (born 1950) – also known as Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt – is British Muslim and a former neo-nazi.

Before his conversion to Islam in 1998, Myatt was the first leader of the British National Socialist Movement (NSM), and was identified by the British newspaper, The Observer, as the “ideological heavyweight” behind the violent neo-nazi group Combat 18 whose founder and leader, Charlie Sargent, was convicted, in 1998, of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he serve at least 14 years in jail.

Following his conversion to Islam, Myatt dissociated himself from nationalism and racialism, and openly wrote and spoke about racism being unethical and dishonorable.

During his three-decade long involvement with neo-nazism, Myatt authored thousands of essays and pamphlets about National Socialism, in many of which he describes the Holocaust as “a hoax”. Following his conversion to Islam, he began writing about Islam, and so far has produced hundreds of articles, many of which advocate Islamic martyrdom operations, express support for Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban, and, in line with Al Qaida’s radical Islamist stance, support the killing of non-combatants. One of Myatt’s articles justifying suicide attacks was, for several years, on the Izz al-Din al-Qassam (the military wing) section of the Hamas website.

An April 2005 NATO workshop heard that Myatt had called on “all enemies of the Zionists to embrace the Jihad” against Jews and the United States. Political scientist Professor George Michael wrote that Myatt has “arguably done more than any other theorist to develop a synthesis of the extreme right and Islam.”

Myatt first came to public attention in 1999, a year after his conversion to Islam, when a pamphlet he wrote many years earlier, A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution, described as a “detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection,” was said to have inspired David Copeland, who left nailbombs in areas frequented by London’s black, Asian, and gay communities. Three people died and 129 were injured in the explosions, several of them losing limbs.

Myatt was also, for many years, a member of the secret British paramilitary organization Column 88, which, it has been alleged, was part of the NATO “stay-behind” Gladio network, designed to conduct sabotage and assassinations in the events of a Soviet Invasion of Western Europe.

In addition to writing about Islam and National Socialism, Myatt has translated works by Sophocles, Sappho, Aeschylus, and Homer, and has written several collections of poems and some Occult horror stories.

It has been alleged that Myatt – using the pseudonym Anton Long – was and is the current Grand Master of the Order of Nine Angles, a Left Hand Path, or Black Magick, Occult group.

Personal life

Myatt grew up in East Africa, and later in the Far East, where he studied the martial arts. He moved to England in 1967 to complete his schooling, and began a degree in Physics but did not complete it, leaving his studies to focus on his political activism. He is reported to live in the Midlands and to have been married three times.

The British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight has written of him: “He does not have the appearance of a Nazi ideologue … Sporting a long ginger beard, Barbour jacket, cords and a tweed flat cap, he resembles an eccentric country gentleman out for a Sunday ramble. But Myatt is anything but the country squire, for beneath this seemingly innocuous exterior is a man of extreme and calculated hatred.”

Political scientist Professor George Michael has written that Myatt is an “intriguing theorist,” with a reported IQ of 187, who has embarked over the years on a series of “Faustian quests.” He studied Taoism and spent time in a Buddhist and later a Christian monastery, and is alleged to have explored the occult, as well as Paganism and what Michael calls “quasi-Satanic” secret societies.

Political activism

Myatt joined Colin Jordan’s British Movement, a neo-Nazi group, in 1968, where he sometimes acted as Jordan’s bodyguard at meetings and rallies. From the 70s until the 90s, he remained involved with paramilitary and neo-Nazi organizations such as Column 88 and Combat 18, and was imprisoned twice for violent offenses in connection with his political activism.

Myatt was the founder and first leader of the National Socialist Movement, of which David Copeland was a member. He also co-founded the neo-Nazi organization the NDFM (National Democratic Freedom Movement) which was active in Leeds, England, in the early 1970s, and founded and led the neo-Nazi Reichsfolk group.

Michael writes that Myatt took over the leadership of Combat 18 in 1998, when Charlie Sargent, the previous leader, was jailed for murder.

Alleged influence on David Copeland

In 1997, a pamphlet Myatt had written called A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution was posted on a website run out of British Columbia, Canada, by Bernard Klatt. The pamphlet included chapter titles such as “Assassination,” “Terror Bombing,” and “Racial War.” According to Michael Whine of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, “the contents provided a detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection with advice on assassination targets, rationale for bombing and sabotage campaigns, and rules of engagement.”

In February 1998, Detectives from Scotland Yard raided Myatt’s home in Worcestershire, arrested him, and removed his computers and files. The case against him – involving allegations of incitement to murder, conspiracy to murder and incitement to racial hatred – was dropped after a three year international investigation because the evidence supplied by the Canadian authorities was not enough to secure a conviction.

It was this pamphlet that, in 1999, allegedly influenced David Copeland, the London nailbomber – also a member of Myatt’s National Socialist Movement – who planted homemade bombs in Brixton, Brick Lane, and inside the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street in London, frequented by the black, Asian, and gay communities respectively. Friends John Light, Nick Moore, and Andrea Dykes and her unborn child died in the Admiral Duncan pub. Copeland told police he had been trying to spark a “racial war.”

According to the BBC’s Panorama program about Copeland broadcast in 2000, when Myatt was leader of the NSM, he called for “the creation of racial terror with bombs.” Myatt is also quoted by Searchlight as having stated that “the primary duty of all National Socialists is to change the world. National Socialism means revolution: the overthrow of the existing System and its replacement with a National-Socialist society. Revolution means struggle: it means war. It means certain tactics have to be employed, and a great revolutionary movement organized which is primarily composed of those prepared to fight, prepared to get their hands dirty and perhaps spill some blood”.

According to another account:

“[A] case of interest is that of the former neo-Nazi ideologue David Myatt, who now goes by the name Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt. For much of his life, Myatt has been a propagandist, recruiter, and street thug for a number of neo-Nazi groups in Britain, and has spent time in prison for racist attacks. Perhaps he is most famous as the founder of the National Socialist Movement, a group whose members included the nailbomber and killer of three, David Copeland, and as the author of a terrorist manual entitled ‘The Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution’. Eventually, Myatt gave up on the idea of ‘Aryan Revolution’ and now embraces Jihadism instead.

ONA

According to various sources, the Order of Nine Angles (ONA) was originally formed in England in the 1960s, with the merger of three neopagan temples called Camlad, The Noctulians, and Temple of the Sun. Following the original leader’s emigration to Australia, it has been alleged that Myatt took over the order and began writing the now publicly-available teachings of the ONA. The ONA now has associates, and groups, in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South America, and Russia.

Author Nick Ryan has asserted that Anton Long, the author of the ONA’s public tracts, is a pseudonym of Myatt This assertion is repeated by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, who claims that Myatt was the founder of the ONA and writer of most of the ONA documents. The allegation has also been repeated many times by the anti-fascist Searchlight organization.

Myatt has always denied such allegations about involvement with the ONA, and using the pseudonym Anton Long, and repeatedly challenged anyone to provide any evidence of such allegations. In addition, Myatt challenged two journalists – Nick Lowles (from Searchlight) and Nick Ryan – to a duel for repeating such allegations, a challenge which they both declined.

Conversion to Islam

Myatt converted to Islam in 1998. He told writer George Michael that his decision to convert began when he took a job on a farm in England. He was working long hours in the fields and felt an affinity with nature, concluding that the sense of harmony he felt had not come about by chance. He told Michael that he was also impressed by the militancy of Islamist groups, and believed that he shared common enemies with Islam, namely “the capitalist-consumer West and international finance.”

Shortly after his conversion, some critics and observers suggested that Myatt’s conversion was insincere and “may be just a political ploy to advance his own failing anti-establishment agenda.”

Gerry Gable, from anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said:

“Myatt is an ethereal character. He is a dangerous man who has twice been jailed for his violent right-wing activities and who openly asked for blood to be spilled in the quest for white Aryan domination. We believe… he remains a deeply intellectual subversive and is still one of the most hardline Nazi intellectuals in Britain today. Myatt believes in the disruption of existing societies as a prelude to the creation of a new more warrior-like Aryan society which he calls the Galactic Empire.”

Others, however, accepted his conversion as genuine, and – given Myatt’s voluminous writings in praise of Islam and his support for the Taliban and his acceptance by other Muslims – this acceptance of his conversion as genuine gradually became the general consensus.

The Numinous Way

In 2007 – as in some previous years – rumors began circulating that Myatt had abandoned Islam in favor of his own earlier philosophy, The Numinous Way, which he had allegedly, in the past few years, continued to develop.

However, Myatt himself has denied this, issuing several public statements in which he affirms that he is a Muslim. He has also continued, using his Muslim name of Abdul-Aziz, to write and publish Islamist articles, the most recent one being dated 15 Zul al-Qidah 1429 [November 2008] and entitled In Reply to John Hutton: Concerning the Infidel Invasion and Occupation of the Muslim land of Afghanistan.

According to one anonymous essay, The Numinous Way, as developed since 2006, is:

“A practical, and spiritual, way of living… providing answers to fundamental philosophical, and ethical, questions. The Numinous Way is apolitical. Empathy may be said to be the essence of The Numinous Way – empathy with life, with Nature; with other human beings; with the very Cosmos itself. From empathy arises compassion – the desire to cease to cause suffering, the desire to alleviate suffering – and honour is how we can do this, how we can restrain ourselves and so do the right, the moral, the empathic, thing.”

According to Myatt himself, writing as Abd al-Aziz:

“Over then years ago, I converted to Islam and, despite past and present rumours and disinformation, I am still a Muslim, Alhamdulillah, and I shall remain a Muslim, InshaAllah.

As for my own political views and opinions now, I have none. For I am a Muslim, and so view this world, and its peoples, according to Deen Al-Islam, striving to think according to Deen Al-Islam, and striving to live according to the laws and customs of Islam, as revealed in the Quran and through the words, deeds and example of the noble Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). My only loyalty and obedience is to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala.

As a Muslim, I regard the Way of Al-Islam as complete and perfect, and superior to the materialistic, arrogant, way of life which now dominates all the societies of the West. Thus, I reject nationalism, racialism, the kaffir-manufactured concept of “the State”, and all the other Tawagheet of the kuffar.”

Jeffrey Kaplan, Religiosity and the Radical Right: Toward the Creation of a New Ethnic Identity, in Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjorgo, eds., Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture (Northeastern University Press, 1998)

Jeffrey Kaplan (University of Helsinki) in Krista Vogelberg, Raili Pöldsaar. Negotiating Spaces on the Common Ground: Selected Papers of the 3rd and 4th International Tartu Conferences on North-American Studies. Tartu University Press, 2000 ISBN 9985401492, 9789985401491

Mr Evil: The Secret Life of Racist Pub Bomber David Copeland by Graeme McLagen and Nick Lowles (Blake Publications, England, July 2000)

Whine, Michael. Cyberspace: A New Medium for Communication, Command and Control by Extremists. International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 1999